


A Tale To Be Found

by MistyDay



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 15:19:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1715318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyDay/pseuds/MistyDay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a moment when he's watching the target named Captain America (Target #79, real name: Steve Rogers) fall from the helicarrier that he doesn't feel regret; he triumphs. His target; destroyed. He's won.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tale To Be Found

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone. This is my very very first Captain America fic. It's short; mainly written to see if I can even WRITE Captain America fic. To be quite honest, I haven't written anything in a very long time. If it goes well, I already have something else in the works. We will see - I am rather intimidated by the writers in this fandom.

The Winter Solder is not James Buchanan Barnes.

\---

There's a moment when he's watching the target named Captain America (Target #79, real name: Steve Rogers) fall from the helicarrier that he doesn't feel regret; he triumphs. His target; destroyed. He's won.

The there's a splash and there's fire and creaking metal and he sees that face in his subconscious, sees a smiling boy with blond hair and wide eyes that looks at him like he's his hero. It's like a looking glass; a distorted one. The Winter Soldier doesn't understand and yet feels; feels the pain and anger and fear.

He dives in before thinking about it, tries not to think about it. When his hand closes around Captain America's (Target #79, real name: Steve Rogers) suit he moves on instinct.

\----

Days later he's alone. There's nothing and no one left for him to report to, no one to issue orders, to box him up like the toy soldier he is and put him away until he's next needed. The Winter Soldier stands motionless on a lot of street corners, images flickering through his brain like torn up reels of old motion pictures. He watches a young girl smile up at her mother, ice cream cone in hand, and sees a hot summer day of a past he doesn't know, with the same blond young man at his side.

The memories, they're never whole and they flicker in and out. He's flipping through a book of a life he's never led, that he doesn't know.

He learns what sadness is one day as he sits in a park by himself, hat pulled low and life going on around him. It's the first time he understands the pit in his stomach as loneliness. He wonders about this life he's forgotten; about the man on the bridge.

\---

Steve Rogers was always an enigma; a small guy with a heart bigger than his senses. The museum exhibit says so, anyway. It says he's Bucky Barnes ("Bucky, I'm not going to fight you." echoes in his ears) and that Captain America (Target #79, real name: Steve Rogers) was his best friend. He learns they grew up together, and that he'd been dead for years and years and years.

That night he dreams of a train and falling, falling, falling. He sees Steve Rogers and his expression of utter desperation and loss. He feels the wind against his back; sees Steve getting smaller and smaller until he was nothing but a speck in the distance. He remembers thinking "This is it."

And it was.

\-----

He spends three days camping out under a pair of oak trees in a nearby park, dodging the police when they try to get him to move along. He steals a pair of gloves from a corner store to hide his hand and ignores the questioning glances when people peer curiously at him for wearing them in the D.C. springtime. He looks up all the Steve Rogers in the phonebook; there are 30. He spends nearly two weeks on a bench staring at the blossoming flowers in a median along the highway. 

In his head, the pictures flicker, memories haunting him, tearing him apart.

"Hey sir, are you okay?" 

And the Winter Soldier (Real name: James Buchanan Barnes, also known as The Asset) looks up at the young girl looking at him, concerned. He wants to snap, to ask her to mind her own business, but it's then that he feels the dampness on his cheeks, tastes the salt on his lips.

"I don't know," He replies honestly, voice gruff with disuse, because he really doesn’t know.

\----

He sees him again two weeks later from afar, Steve Rogers walking by himself down the street, a bag of groceries in hand. He's still a bit bruised; he doesn't seem like he's been sleeping much. The Winter Soldier remembers the tilt of his head, the tight politeness in the smile he gives to the people he passes on the street. For the first time those pictures make sense and he recognizes the man in them, can match the younger face in his dreams with the one walking towards him. He looks older, a little more tired, a lot more weary. For once, the Asset thinks he can be Bucky Barnes, if Steve Rogers wants him to be; he’s longing for a place in this world. For once he wants the loneliness to disappear. 

For once the fear gives way to longing, and for once, Bucky Barnes (Formerly: The Winter Soldier, also known as The Asset) lets himself be found.

\----

Later, after memories come and go and the emotions and the debilitating dreams and nightmares and frustrations and hope, Bucky pretends not to hear Steve cry. He deserves that, he deserves to be spared knowing that his tears are breaking Bucky's already broken heart.

Instead, he wakes up early the next morning, struggles making a simple omelet and some toast. He leaves it for Steve on the kitchen table with a daisy plucked from the neighbor's garden.

Then he leaves, and waits to be found again.


End file.
